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So far CommonWell has created 188 blog entries.
8 05, 2014

CommonWell Update and Demonstration Webinar Recap

2023-01-31T04:37:12-06:00

CommonWell’s journey over the past 14 months has been an exciting one, and I had the pleasure of recounting it in a recent webinar. Joining me to present were CommonWell colleagues from athenahealth, Cerner and CPSI who provided a demonstration how the CommonWell services work across the different EHR systems, allowing providers to query and retrieve patient data. In case you missed the webinar, I’ve outlined some of the highlights below. (Jitin Asnaani, CommonWell Health Alliance Operating Committee and Membership Committee member, also gave a similar update with demonstrations provided by McKesson, Allscripts and Greenway on April 22). As a partnership between fierce HIT competitors dedicated to making data interoperable for the common good, CommonWell’s announcement was a surprise to the industry at HIMSS13. In December 2013, the first four [...]

CommonWell Update and Demonstration Webinar Recap2023-01-31T04:37:12-06:00
31 03, 2014

Updates, Demonstrations and More!

2023-01-31T04:37:13-06:00

What a first year CommonWell Health Alliance has had in formalizing our not-for-profit trade association, adding new members, launching our services in four geographies and releasing our initial specs to the public. Last month at HIMSS14, we appreciated the positive reaction we received from attendees as they watched our founding member companies demonstrate CommonWell services working across different EHRs at different health provider sites. In response to ongoing requests to see our services in action, we will be hosting two webinars in the month of April. Join us for one or both sessions, where we will provide an update on the progress we have made over the last 12 months, as well as feature our founding member companies demonstrating CommonWell services to enroll and match a patient, and then query [...]

Updates, Demonstrations and More!2023-01-31T04:37:13-06:00
6 03, 2014

A Vision Turned into Reality: Real World Provider Examples

2023-01-31T04:37:13-06:00

Nothing is quite so pleasant in the world of Health IT than seeing an idea you have worked on brought to life to help providers and patients improve healthcare. In May 2012, Dr. David McCallie emailed me with an idea he had been thinking about since a Bi-Partisan Center meeting raised the critical issue of patient linking across settings, just as I had been about to email him about the same idea. Between that time and HIMSS13, we conceived of the key ideas that eventually became the core CommonWell Health Alliance services: patient matching, patient linking and link management, authorization and consent, record locator services and data access brokering. But it takes more than an idea to improve care, and a much larger team worked between HIMSS13 and HIMSS14 on [...]

A Vision Turned into Reality: Real World Provider Examples2023-01-31T04:37:13-06:00
4 03, 2014

One Exciting Year Later: Services Live and Specs Available

2023-01-31T04:37:14-06:00

One year ago today I saw the CEOs and Sr. Executives of 5 top HIT vendors put away their competitive nature and make a pledge to build seamless, plug-and-play interoperability into their products, all for the common good. In order to turn this vision into a reality, technical teams from all the companies came together under the working group name Standards, Technology & Implementation Group to accomplish this pledge. At the time of our announcement at HIMSS 2013, our respective technical groups were excited, driven and likely a little apprehensive about what it would take to work across all these competing organizations. However, the teams rapidly came together as a cohesive unit, brainstorming and fleshing out core concepts and standards. We quickly committed to utilizing established standards wherever possible (e.g., [...]

One Exciting Year Later: Services Live and Specs Available2023-01-31T04:37:14-06:00
28 02, 2014

HIMSS14: A Picture Perfect Week

2023-01-31T04:37:14-06:00

This week on the HIMSS Exhibition floor, one of my former colleagues who swung by the CommonWell Health Alliance booth said to me "HIMSS is like a family reunion." That is so true. You reunite people you haven't seen in years. You meet new friends who are connected to someone you know. And you share stories as you catch up on both personal and professional happenings. Besides what we are working on at CommonWell (which is pretty awesome!), what's cool about working with CommonWell Health Alliance is that my health care "family" is expanding beyond my traditional industry and company affiliations. At CommonWell, my colleagues are from Allscripts, athenahealth, CPSI, Cerner, Greenway, McKesson, RelayHealth and Sunquest. Not to mention the addition of CVS and MEDHOST to our growing family. It [...]

HIMSS14: A Picture Perfect Week2023-01-31T04:37:14-06:00
25 02, 2014

The Faces for Interoperability: Building consensus to break down silos to deliver high quality care

2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00

Everyone has a story when it comes to the complexity of the health care system. Especially when it comes to accessing and connecting health records. But what good is a great story, if you don’t have someone to share it with. That’s why we launched the Faces for Interoperability effort (aka #ForInterop). Through social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook and direct submissions at CommonWell Health Alliance’s HIMSS booth (#1389), more than a 100 people already have shared their story and support for seamless interoperability across the health care system. We love this shot of Janet Marchibroda, Director of Health Innovation Initiative, Bipartisan Policy Center, and her simple statement “Make Health Data Available”. Because isn’t that what we all want?! Or this one from Margaret posting about her father and [...]

The Faces for Interoperability: Building consensus to break down silos to deliver high quality care2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00
24 02, 2014

And Now There are Nine.

2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00

It is the first morning of the HIMSS14 exhibition and in CommonWell fashion, we are unleashing BIG NEWS. You may have seen our news reported yesterday of all our service launch clients going live AND expanding our services to additional locations, including national health system, Tenet Healthcare. But there’s more – we are now pleased to report that CVS Caremark and MEDHOST have joined as contributing members to the CommonWell Health Alliance. We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome and start working with the nation’s largest pharmacy chain and a tenured enterprise IT supplier with an established customer base. Our work together starts today. Read the full releases on our website or come by our booth #1389 or MEDHOST’s booth nearby at #747 to learn more. Speaking of our booth, [...]

And Now There are Nine.2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00
18 02, 2014

All a Buzz About Our First Anniversary at HIMSS …

2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00

Since CommonWell Health Alliance took the stage the first day of HIMSS last year to announce our vendor-led collaboration around seamless interoperability, we have been repeatedly asked – what can you do at HIMSS14 that will exceed the buzz you generated in 2013? Our answer has always been the same. Prove it works. And that is exactly what we intend to do. So, while we don’t want to shed too much light on our updates, efforts and just general cool stuff that we will unveil at HIMSS, we did think it would be fun to provide a sneak peek at what we have been up to during the last year and what you can expect to see more of at our HIMSS booth # 1389. For the seven founding members [...]

All a Buzz About Our First Anniversary at HIMSS …2023-01-31T04:37:15-06:00
18 02, 2014

A Shared Vision of Improving Efficiencies and Saving Patients’ Lives

2023-01-31T04:37:16-06:00

It’s been nearly seven months since Sunquest joined CommonWell Health Alliance. I can say that as the Alliance has progressed and its members have deepened their involvement, it has been a privilege to experience and be a part of it. Just the same as the day we joined, Sunquest is dedicated to achieving interoperability for the common good. We remain committed to improving patient safety by developing, delivering, and supporting expert software solutions that fully automate lab operations and diagnostic processes across the continuum of care. We remain committed to promoting a national infrastructure with common standards and policies and ensuring that our products have been certified to work on the national infrastructure. Along with CommonWell and other members of the alliance, Sunquest has embarked on proof of concept pilot [...]

A Shared Vision of Improving Efficiencies and Saving Patients’ Lives2023-01-31T04:37:16-06:00
11 02, 2014

A Year of Promise and Fulfillment

2023-01-31T04:37:16-06:00

Onstage in New Orleans at HIMSS13, the CommonWell Health Alliance was announced. While presenting the goals and intent of the initiative, the five CEOs within the health IT industry were met with wide media reaction, praise from supporters such as the Bipartisan Policy Center, and admittedly, a dose of skepticism by a few. Could these market competitors across acute and ambulatory segments live up to the embrace? Was it all for show? Could they really get anything done and so on. I recall McKesson CEO John Hammergren deeming the Alliance an “inflection point in health care.” Now as HIMSS14 approaches and CommonWell plans to focus on announcements and initial successes in Orlando matching those goals and intent, I think we can call the combined achievements of the past year a [...]

A Year of Promise and Fulfillment2023-01-31T04:37:16-06:00
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